The Room In Between

Secrets and Lies. A lie between two people is like a vacant room yawning between two occupied ones. You stand in the doorway across the precipice staring at each other silently wanting, waiting for a word, a phrase, a brief conversation to dissolve the walls and disappear the air, taking with it that lodged brick now suffocating your hearts. The fingertips touch but don’t feel. The eyes look but can’t see. Frantic fluttering words wait upon the true ones, the fearful ones, the naked shameful ones forsaken and lost in the silence between. It’s lonely living inside a lie. So lonely and quiet, the ears burn from the silence where every labored breath is strained through and pushed down and counted. The last breath of a drowning man.

My daughter made a very poor choice this week. When I called her on it, she lied. I hate lies. I understand why she lied because I was a child once too. Kids do stupid shit and then they lie. It’s hard to trust the truth. What’s even harder is that it has shut down communication between us. I’m also very impatient in conflict. I have very little tolerance for sustained emotional discomfort. I try to get rid of it as soon as possible. But here I am, having to make peace with my heartbreak, my confusion, my worry and my sadness. My discomfort.

My child is very different from me which is God’s blessing and God’s teaching. She shuts down in the face of stress, and her internal processes much slower. It takes her a while to surface. So that means I have to wait. Wait for her, wait for truth, wait for……

So while I wait in this doorway, I will call up a different kind of silence in prayer and maybe I can infuse the birthing room in between us….. with light and love and lovely.